I’m not even going to bother setting this one up—just read the opening of this review by Gregory Leon Miller from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Quim Monzó might just be the best writer you’ve never heard of. One could say he’s Catalan’s best-known writer – in fact, the publicity materials for Monzó’s books in the English-language markets routinely say so. But given our culture’s scant attention to literature in translation, such titles, however well meant, only accentuate a writer’s obscurity.

His latest, “A Thousand Morons,” is one of the strongest short-story collections I’ve read in years. Out of material too bleak perhaps for mainstream tastes, Monzó has crafted the funniest prose.

THIS IS ALLTRUE.

Monzó is one of the best—and one of the funniest—writers writing today. He’s an incredible person and deserves all this praise and more. But don’t forget about Peter Bush!

As a translator himself – he has produced Catalan versions of authors ranging from Thomas Hardy to Truman Capote – Monzó must surely appreciate the suppleness of Peter Bush’s work here. Bush gives us Monzó’s subtle complexity without any of the clunky moments that can deform translations of comic writing in particular.

Credit must also go to Open Letter (an imprint of the University of Rochester), whose devotion to literature in translation and unpredictable roster have quietly made it one of the most important small presses in the country.

Aw shucks. That’s a really nice compliment at the end as well . . .

So, just like in my last post, if you take out a year-long subscription to Open Letter I’ll throw in both A Thousand Morons and 18% Gray. (For current subscribers, I’ll still give you 12 books for $100—don’t worry.)

Actually, I’m going to take this one step further . . . If you email me at chad.post at rochester.edu, I’ll send you a free Thousand Morons T-shirt. Just let me know what size you want. We have S, M, L, XL, and XXL.

San Francisco Chronicle books editor Oscar Villalon is leaving the paper, having taken a buyout. Buyouts have been looming at the paper, which has been suffering from worsening financial woes along with other major dailies throughout the country. Villalon’s last day will be Friday, and it is expected that deputy book editor Regan McMahon will now oversee the section, one of only a handful of print standalone book review sections still running. Villalon’s departure leaves McMahon as the only full-time staffer handling books. (from PW)

I really like Oscar—he’s an incredibly funny and sincere guy—and it sucks to see this happen. More true than ever thought that the days of extensive (and non-wire) book coverage in local newspapers are quickly becoming a thing of the past . . .

For me, Kate Foster’s review in the San Francisco Chronicle of Lieve Joris’s The Rebels’ Hour perfectly illustrates some of the ridiculous hangups Americans have when it comes to nonfiction and the representation of “truth.”

The Rebels’ Hour is in an interesting postion—it’s a work of “literary reportage” that is “based on real characters, situations, and places, without ever coinciding with them completely.” The publisher—Grove/Atlantic—categorized this as history, and included the following note on the copyright page:

The Rebels’ Hour falls into a category—literary reportage—that has a long history worldwide, but does not have an established tradition in the United States. As Joris clarifies in her preface, “the facts in this book have all been researched in minute detail, but in order to paint a realistic picture of my characters I’ve had to fill in some parts of their lives from my own imagination. It was the only way to make the story both particular and general.” The end result, as one French review noted, is a book that is “even truer than truth” (Afrique-Asia). Having had to choose between fiction and nonfiction, we felt The Rebels’ Hour belonged on the shelf marked nonfiction.

All of this is why I didn’t include the book on our translation database. I even brought this up with Lauren Wein (the book’s super-cool editor) and she agreed that it shouldn’t be counted in the translation list, since it’s clearly not fiction.

Not so, according to the Chronicle. Instead, they label Foster’s piece a “fiction review” and she explains her own viewpoint right away:

This setup, which includes changing the protagonist’s name, will make some readers uncomfortable. After all, in a war-torn country with the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission in the world, there is more than a story to tell; there is a record to set straight.

(To be honest, American readers need to be made uncomfortable. In fact, I would argue that making people uncomfortable is a mark of a great work of literature.)

Grove went out of their way to explain the book’s situation (written in a style that really is pervasive throughout the rest of the world) and Foster foregrounded that “questionable” position at the beginning of her piece—but did she then need to criticize the book based on its shortcomings as a novel?

Despite Joris’ vivid details – the putrid smells of sweaty young soldiers and death, generals constantly gabbing on cell phones, a protagonist partial to milk and Fanta – the story doesn’t read like a novel, and Assani never comes into clear focus.

And it’s not as lyrical as a book of poems either! I don’t know when this hang-up started—maybe with James Frey? (At Dalkey we encountered a bit of this in regards to Voices from Chernobyl, a collection of interviews with Chernobyl survivors that have been recast as (gasp!) monologues. Are the responses exactly the same as the actual people gave? How much did Alexievich pretty it all up? It’s worth noting that this won the NBCC Award for Nonfiction, so I think it’s clear that some people can understand and appreciate this type of “reportage.”)

Regardless, every month there’s a new scandal re: someone making shit up about their lives. Most of the time it’s an American writer elaborating on their past in order to profit and sell more books. And get on Oprah. And intentionally deceive the American public for personal gain. I completely agree—this isn’t cool and is more than shitty. But is that situation analogous to The Rebels’ Hour? Not by a long shot. But Americans, in their typical Puritanical way, are too uptight to understand that there are gray areas, that nonfiction is never objectively “true,” and that the memoirs everyone gets all bent out of shape about—when they find out they’re chocked full of lies—aren’t worth worrying about in the first place.

OK, I’m done for today . . . It’s just so discouraging that Americans seem to have a hard time enjoying/learning from other cultures because they can’t write books according to our prescriptive standards and rules . . .

....

The Little Horse by Thorvald Steen
Reviewed by P. T. Smith

The last five days of the eleventh-century Icelandic politician, writer of sagas, and famous murder victim Snorri Sturleleson (the Norwegian spelling, Snorre, is preserved in the book) make up Thorvald Steen’s most recently translated historical fiction, The Little Horse. Murdered. . .

We all know Paris, or at least we think we know it. The Eiffel Tower. The Latin Quarter. The Champs-Élysées. The touristy stuff. In Dominique Fabre’s novel, Guys Like Me, we’re shown a different side of Paris: a gray, decaying. . .

Birth of a Bridge by Maylis de Kerangal
Reviewed by Christopher Iacono

One hundred pages into Birth of a Bridge, the prize-winning novel from French writer Maylis de Kerangal, the narrator describes how starting in November, birds come to nest in the wetlands of the fictional city of Coca, California, for three. . .

At 30, the Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli is already gathering her rosebuds. Faces in the Crowd, her poised debut novel, was published by Coffee House Press, along with her Brodsky-infused essay collection, Sidewalks. The essays stand as a theoretical map. . .

Fantomas Versus the Multinational Vampires: An Attainable Utopia (narrated by Julio Cortázar) is, not disappointingly, as wild a book as its title suggests. It is a half-novella half-graphic novel story about . . . what, exactly? A European tribunal, Latin. . .

Marie NDiaye has created a tiny, psychological masterpiece with her Self-Portrait in Green. In it she explores how our private fears and insecurities can distort what we believe to be real and can cause us to sabotage our intimate relationships.. . .

Reading a genre book—whether fantasy, science fiction, crime, thriller, etc.—which begins to seem excessively, stereotypically bad, I have to make sure to ask myself: is this parodying the flaws of the genre? Usually, this questioning takes its time coming. In. . .